This study was published recently in Cancer Prevention Research and highlights the work of Salman Hyder, Professor of biomedical sciences in the College of Veterinary Medicine and the Dalton Cardiovascular Research Center. This was not a human trial, but exposed rats with a certain type of breast cancer to apigenin, a common compound found in parsley and other plant products. The rats that were exposed to the apigenin developed fewer tumors and experienced significant delays in tumor formation compared to those rats that were not exposed to apigenin. Hyder found that apigenin not only blocked new blood vessel formation, thereby delaying, and sometimes stopping, the development of the tumors but it also reduced the overall number of tumors.

However, this is only an animal trial and while apigenin did delay tumor growth, it did not stop the initial formation of cancer cells within the breast.

If you want to be proactive about breast cancer risk there are some simple changes to your diet that can help.

So What Should You Eat?

Apigenin is most prevalent in parsley and celery, but can also be found in apples, oranges, nuts and other plant products. Because apigenin is not absorbed efficiently into the bloodstream at the present time scientists are unsure of how much can or should be taken as there are no specific dosage for humans yet. However, it appears that keeping a minimal level of apigenin in the bloodstream is important to delay the onset of breast cancer that progresses in response to progestins such as MPA. So crunch on some celery and start eating the parsley you have been decorating your dinner plate with!

HRT has become an established ‘treatment’ for menopause symptoms and in the United States last year, formulations of estrogen and progestin hormones were given to more than 6 million women who had symptoms such as hot flashes, sleep disturbance and irritability.

The serious risks flagged up by the massive clinical trial by the Women’s Health Initiative ought to have been clear. They tested the higher-dose, oral estrogen-plus-progestin therapy and had to halt the trial because of the increased incidence of breast cancer and cardiovascular disease in women taking the hormones. That was in 2002 and since that trial there has been increasing and continuing evidence indicating that a lower dose of hormones can treat menopausal symptoms just as effectively in many women with minimal side effects.

The latest findings from Stanford researchers show that as of 2009, physicians’ practices weren’t keeping up with this clinical evidence about lower hormone doses, which the U.S. Food and Drug Administration recommends.   Sandra Tsai, MD, MPH, clinical instructor of medicine and lead author of the new study was very clear that these lower doses may incur lower risks of breast cancer and cardiovascular disease and that about two-thirds of women with menopausal symptoms are likely to respond to low-dose therapy.  Sadly the researchers found that not even one-third of the women taking hormone therapy in 2009 were on a low dose.

Transdermal delivery more effective for hormones

In addition to the research on the effects of low-dose hormone therapy, recent studies have also established that delivering hormones through the skin (transdermal delivery) reduces the risk of serious health problems such as blood clots. Because of that, the Stanford team had expected more of the women on hormone therapy would be using transdermal hormones in 2009 than in 2001. But the data showed no meaningful change at all. ”

The researchers had also expected that for women who needed treatment for menopausal symptoms, physicians would start prescribing hormone therapy during or just after menopause more often. The data, however, showed that in 2009 the preponderance of women on the drugs were older, and thus at greater risk for adverse effects.

They avoided reaching a conclusion about why clinical practice has not caught up with research findings, but may I suggest that women heed the advice of the late John Lee, MD and start being proactive about their menopausal healthcare by turning to natural rather than synthetic forms of HRT for symptom relief.

Hormonal changes in overweight or obese women could be responsible for the high number of cases, as could a drop in the number of pregnancies, experts at the charity suggested. However the major well-known risk factors are all connected to the levels of different hormones in the body and their overall balance.

The charity noted that  “When levels of oestrogen in your body are higher and progesterone is lower, it still lets the cells in the womb grow, and that happening over a long period of time can lead to an increase of womb cancer.” Sounds like a fair description of oestrogen dominance to me, and the results of allowing unopposed oestrogen without the balancing effect of natural progesterone.

It is sad, but not surprising, that oestrogen dominance is still not given enough serious credence by the medical profession as their drive to prescribe HRT rather than any natural alternatives seems undiminished.

I had a conversation recently with a lady who was interested in natural HRT but was told that it was ‘all nonsense’ by her doctor. The lady wanted to change her HRT for something with fewer side effects but the nil side effects option of replacing her HRT with natural hormones was certainly not offered to her.

It’s no wonder that so many women vote with their feet and switch to natural alternatives themselves.

So what caused that drop of 50 per cent in taking HRT? It seems this is what John Lee described as women ‘voting with their bodies’ rather than the medical profession prescribing less.

A study undertaken in 2009 at Stanford University in California found that women who take HRT for more than five years double their risk of suffering breast cancer for every 12 months they spend taking it. Breast cancer is the most common form of the disease diagnosed in women in Britain and one in nine women will develop the disease at some form in their life. More than 45,000 cases are diagnosed every year and about 15,000 women die from the cancer, although survival rates have increased significantly in recent years.

However, the good news is that within a year of stopping HRT the risk of developing breast cancer was almost back to normal. This was not a small scale study either, unlike the original research on HRT, as more than 57,0000 women were studied which enabled the research team to say conclusively that there was very strong evidence that HRT causes breast cancer.

Sadly, women with POF are also run a much higher risk of osteoporosis, heart disease, memory loss, and a higher risk of premature death. The usual treatment that is offered is replacement hormone treatment from either the contraceptive pill or HRT. Both of these medications carry a higher risk of risk of stroke, heart disease and breast cancer as well the unpleasant side effects many women suffer when taking them. .

Now a small study done in Scotland has found that young women with ovarian failure would benefit from taking natural bio-identical hormones rather than synthetic ones and certainly safer for them than taking the contraceptive pill to try and improve their condition.

The women in the study were given an oestradiol patch (a natural oestrogen) and either vaginal or oral progesterone, not a synthetic progestogen. The doses of progesterone (200mg) and oestradiol (0.10 mg) that were given daily are quite high, but it was found that on the natural hormone regime the women’s’ blood pressure went down and their kidney function improved significantly.

The Scottish study believe that the success of the treatment was down to the transdermal delivery of the hormones and the fact they did not have any of the side effects you would expect from using synthetic hormones.

One other benefit for women using natural progesterone for POF instead of being given either the contraceptive pill or HRT is that they get the bone-building benefit of natural progesterone and are so more protected from osteoporosis which does not occur when the synthetic hormones are given.